Horn based loudspeakers why the controversy?

My first speaker was an Altec 4....don't know who owned Altec at the time but that piezo tweeter was ear piercing

Oddiofyl  I believe that is when Altec  was no longer Altec

Right.... it showed...

Sorry for my English ,  i want  to share my speakers design
knowledgeable as a speaker designer.  Mostly all high efficiency LS
get  few main issues , First, Whizzer cone driver is not perfect to
produce highs , but it can be solve to add supertweeter   , Second--
bass is too weak, but also can be solve to add active bass module.
Next  is more problematic -- deficiency upper bass and  midbass.
There are call baffle step . it can  be solve ,mechanically  by make very big baffle
like some Voxative  LS, or make big Midbass Horn, Is very complicate
to make flat frequansy   response for Horn design. It is reason why
a lot audiophile don t like Horn application, Too much coloration.
But there are another way , to solve midbass problem and keep
efficiency the same by adding active midbass driver cover
frequansy up  to 700 hz , So you amp will be  loaded only for
wide range and sypertweeter.

 

 

I'm a speaker designer too and I listened to a horn/hybrid system for 10 years. (TAD 15 inch woofer/TAD horn and tweeter).

There is nothing wrong with horns as a high end loudspeaker. I even used mine with ss amplification.

The distortions levels from using the compression driver (in my case) were incredibly low. I'm talking about distortions due to operating the drivers at 2 percent of what they were made to do in terms of spl, or something equivalent.

That said, I've gone back to cones and domes and I don't really miss the horns. There are pluses and minuses, but properly made they are a 100 percent valid approach toward a speaker.